Andrew Leigh

[The report is available from ANU Press]

AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

MONDAY, 15 AUGUST 2016

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 Thank you for that very generous introduction. Can I of course acknowledge we’re meeting on the traditional lands of the Ngunnawal people and pay my respects to their elders past and present.

Let me start by thanking Peter Drysdale for inviting me to speak at this event.

As all of you know, Peter was recently awarded the Order of Australia which, among many other things, was for his ground-breaking work as the intellectual architect of APEC.

Dr LEIGH (Fraser) (15:53): In mid-2009, the then Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull, decided he would bring back an old stunt from the Liberal Party—the notion of a debt truck. He put a debt truck on the road, sat at its wheel and said that under Labor gross debt might go to $315 billion. That, he thought, was so terrifying that the Australian people had to be warned about it. Well, it is instructive to look at the budget papers to see where gross debt will be under the Turnbull government. Under the Turnbull government, gross debt is going not to $315 billion but to $624 billion. Gross debt will be nearly twice as large as when Malcolm Turnbull got his first debt truck. I have news for the Prime Minister: it is time to trade in his debt truck and buy a debt B-double. 

Dr LEIGH (Fraser) (11:39): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The image of blue Caribbean seas, golden island sands and a lonely coconut palm standing above a spot marked X on a faded map remains a powerful image in our social mythology.

And well it might, because the notion of buried treasure in the Caribbean is no myth. In the 2012 American election there was widespread outrage at the notion that Mitt Romney had been keeping a significant share of his wealth in the Cayman Islands. Perhaps this was because he and other wealthy people with money to hide from tax had noticed that the previous year the Tax Justice Network's Financial Secrecy Index had declared the Cayman Islands to be the world's second most significant tax haven. 

Dr LEIGH (Fraser) (16:30): The 2016 Lunar New Year celebrations, acknowledging the Year of the Monkey, were recently hosted by the member for Berowra, the Father of the House, and me here in one of our courtyards. Members and senators were joined by community representatives including Sam Wong AM; Donni and Samuel Pho, from the Australian Salvation Army; Mrs Chin Wong; and Gary Lee, the 2016 New Australian of the Year. The Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, also spoke at the celebrations and welcomed the inauguration of what will hopefully be an annual fixture on the parliamentary calendar. We launched traditional floating lanterns into one of the parliamentary ponds—possibly the first time this has happened—and then moved to the public lawns on Federation Mall to enjoy the skills of David Wong's Prosperous Mountain Lion Dance group. 

Dr LEIGH (Fraser) (15:56): I was holding a street stall recently when a young couple came up to chat about their troubles buying a first home. She was a teacher, he was a builder, and they were thinking about having a family but they were worried that they would not be able to meet the mortgage repayments when their two incomes went down to one. Despite being in their late 20s, this couple were looking at moving back in with their in-laws. Changing nappies and juggling sleepless nights under the same roof as their in-laws was not their idea of the Australian dream. But their story is, sadly, typical. 

Tax Laws Amendment (Tougher Penalties for Country-by-Country Reporting) Bill 2016 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

MONDAY, 29 FEBRUARY 2016

Dr LEIGH (Fraser) (10:38):  I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Picture a glorious summer's evening at the SCG: the stadium lights are blazing, the dusk is settling in, and family and friends are abuzz at the prospect of a close finish to a match that is hanging in the balance. Suddenly a naked man runs out on the pitch, screaming in front of thousands. The security detail finally tackles him after a minute of cavorting.

Incidents such as these are not uncommon. One happened late last year at a Big Bash Twenty20 match, prompting Ricky Ponting in the commentary box to say: 'Let's hope that is a $6,000 fine at least. It's disgraceful; we don't like seeing that. Some people probably do, but it's a bad look for the game.' He was certainly right that the look was bad—for the streaker as well as for the game—but unfortunately Mr. Ponting's quite reasonable minimum fine threshold was above what the real streaker would receive. The penalty for invading the pitch at the Sydney Cricket Ground is $5,500.

Change is made by those who show up - a tribute to Pat Corbett

I rise this afternoon to pay tribute to Patricia Lukin Corbett, a branch member of mine and a terrific supporter of progressive politics in Australia. Pat passed away on 3 January this year aged 89. Her life was an extraordinary one of service to others. She reminded us of the adage that change is made by those who show up.

"A NEW PRODUCTIVITY PUSH"

SPEECH TO THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC FORUM
SYDNEY

28 JANUARY 2016

Princeton economist Paul Krugman once put it neatly: ‘Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything.’

As an economist, I love hearing real-world examples of how firms are raising productivity. A couple of years ago, I visited a manufacturing firm that makes mining machines. So baroque had the production line become that when they revamped the layout, the firm found that it was able to get the same work done on a line just one-thirteenth the length. The result was a one-third improvement in productivity for the company.

Visiting Fortescue’s operation in the Pilbara, I heard about its company-wide competition called ‘Have a Crack’, with the prize being $50,000 for the best productivity-boosting suggestion. The winning idea increased the efficiency of the machines that load iron ore onto bulk carriers, saving the company tens of millions of dollars each year. Not a bad return on investment.

This kind of innovation is what companies like the ones represented here today do so well. Coming up with the creative improvements which let workers do more with fewer resources. Honing in on the little productivity gains which make a big difference to profits and growth. As you well know, this is work that never ends. Companies like yours are always looking for fresh ways to stay ahead of the curve as technology and the global economy evolves.

Smart governments need to do the same.

SPEECH TO THE JUSTICE CONNECTIONS CONFERENCE 2015

PRISONS DILEMMA: AN ECONOMIST’S PERSPECTIVE ON INCARCERATION

Rosie Anne Fulton is an Indigenous woman from Alice Springs who suffers Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. She has endured a lifetime of abuse and disadvantage. Far from attracting help and support from government agencies, her problems landed her in a Kalgoorlie prison.

After being caught driving without a licence and whilst intoxicated in Western Australia, Rosie Anne was incarcerated under that state’s mental impairment laws. She was detained indefinitely without any conviction and ended up serving 22 months in custody before being released thanks to the advocacy of the Aboriginal Disability Justice Campaign.

Marlon Noble’s situation is no less shocking. Charged with sexual assault when he was 19, the court quickly found him to be mentally impaired. Like Rosie Anne, it was decided Marlon was unfit to stand trial and he was instead held in custody. The Department of Public Prosecutions eventually withdrew Marlon’s charges after finding that there was little evidence to support the original allegations that had landed him behind bars. Marlon was released, but not before languishing in prison for a decade without a conviction. Marlon said of his experience: “I don’t like it in jail. Scary place. You got no families in there, no brothers or sisters to talk to. You’re on your own.”

How did Australia become a place where locking people up for long stretches is the default setting in our justice system? And how can we, in good conscience, allow this to continue as the incarceration rate skyrockets? 

Economists would be familiar with the famous thought experiment in game theory known as the ‘prisoners’ dilemma’. The nub of it is that two people, by virtue of being unable to communicate, end up making a decision that is bad for both of them.

I want to argue today that Australia’s justice policies suffer from what we might call a ‘prisons dilemma’. For want of a serious conversation about what works and what doesn’t, we’ve become stuck in a situation where we spend huge amounts on jails yet end up perpetuating cycles of disadvantage, poverty and crime. As a result, our community suffers, and so do the individuals who are incarcerated.

To turn that situation around, we need to lower Australia’s incarceration rates. Achieving that will demand a recipe of responses rather than any single solution – in my time with you today I’ll talk a bit about what I believe our priority responses should be. But to get Australia’s imprisonment rates down, and keep them down, we also need to adopt a rigorous, evidence-based mindset which evaluates all current and future policies against this objective. We already know that a lot of what we do in the justice system doesn’t ‘work’ if this is our goal, yet we continue with existing policies anyway. Putting the question: what works? at the centre of justice policymaking would be a big step forward for Australia.      

Before I go about prescribing policy, let’s take a step back. I first want to paint a picture of the trends in our incarceration rates, and then look at what is behind those trends. This will help us better understand the ‘prisons dilemma’ that we face in Australia today.

The future of Australia's tax system: opportunity, growth and integrity

Speech to the Corporate Tax and Transfer Pricing Summit

Sydney

It is always very gratifying, when I come to events like this, to see so many smart people coming together to work through the hard questions about what our tax system should look like for the future.

We’ve come together at a time when these questions could not be more topical, or their answers more contested. For those of us who’ve been toiling away in the tax space for some time, it has been both surprising and exciting to see usually-esoteric issues of tax system design move to the front and centre of the political debate in recent months. People care about tax at the moment; people are interested in tax at the moment, and that means there has rarely been a better time for your ideas to have an impact in the wider community. To be a tax expert today is like releasing a breakthrough pop hit after years of playing in grungy pubs – one morning you wake up, and lo and behold, the world wants to listen to you.

We’ve been hearing a lot recently about how important Australia’s tax system is – how it can support or obstruct growth; how it can encourage investment or scare it away; how it can make us an international magnet for business or see us lag behind in international competitiveness.

As the member of Labor’s shadow ministry whose primary responsibility is tax, I wholeheartedly agree that our tax settings matter. But just as the federal budget is not the entire economy, we shouldn’t confuse building an efficient and equitable tax system with the much bigger task of setting Australia up to grow and flourish.

In my time with you today I want to look at how the tax system intersects with a range of other policy settings and choices which have as much – if not more – influence over whether we can continue as a country of fair opportunity and strong growth. In looking to the global picture and questions about multinational tax policy, I’ll also argue that we should be thinking about Australia’s international competitiveness in far broader terms than how big a tax break companies can get if they do business here.